Paul Gauguin Cruises

An Experience Tailored to the Wonders of the World

Pacific Beachcomber provides an exceptional cruise experience tailored to the unparalleled wonders of Tahiti, the South Pacific, and Fiji. This is one of several collaborations with the company, which includes The Brando and Pacific Beachcomber.

Wallop built a custom transactional website that runs on a number of custom Drupal modules on top of Resco, a third-party booking platform with significant technical hurdles.

The Challenge

This was one of the most technically complex projects we’ve taken on as an agency, because we needed to design and build a booking engine from scratch, and the technology layers between custom Drupal layers the business relied on, and a legacy booking software. We also needed to build a server from scratch that could scale and handle spikes.

When we started this engagement, the website was visually dated and didn’t reflect the brand. It offered no support for mobile devices. Its booking functionality was limited and didn’t allow users to plan or book their trips in a meaningful way. The user experience was clunky and unintuitive, with a lot of friction along the booking path.

The underlying framework didn’t play nicely with the legacy third-party booking platform and required a significant amount of maintenance and resources due to its age, compatibility issues, and low integration between technologies.

There were a lot of challenges we took on here. The key priorities were to align the website with the brand, make it highly visual to support the marketing programs, implement tracking and data modeling across technology layers, build a booking engine from scratch, and custom integration between custom Drupal modules and a legacy booking platform.

The Results

Wallop delivered a comprehensive roadmap and technical blueprint and got to work. The first step was a lengthy wireframing and UX design process, followed by an iterative visual design process in close collaboration with the in-house creative team. Our technical team seamlessly integrated existing modules and built a new booking and Drupal framework to accompany the tailored creative, UX design, and digital marketing.

We also designed and built a server that was scaled and optimized to manage high traffic volume and queries from Resco, their central reservation platform. Our team manages the digital marketing through a monthly program that increases visibility, tactility, search engine equity, conversion rate optimization, and paid/social advertising.